Wednesday started early with the bus taking us to the airport at 5:45am. We flew to Guangzhou where we were met by a local guide (Daniel) and a driver.
We learned there was a change in plans and we'd visit the Guangzhou Record Archive immediately instead of on Friday as originally planned (as he felt time would be too tight on Friday). When we got there, we were put in a room with a set of documents and told not to photograph but I could write what I wanted with Daniel translating. Luckily, Sonia could play a game on my phone (and took a picture of us without me knowing), as Daniel patiently went through the documents with me. Many I have or had filled out. (Lacretia, it brought back memories of when I sat on a bed with Sonia while dictating pages of forms to you to fill in the night I met Sonia. They are all in the file.) The one new document was the finding / police report which gave me some more information on how Sonia entered the orphanage including the name and address (at least at that time) of the finder. I also found out that Sonia has a China registration from her time here.
After that we stopped quickly at a McDonalds (guide suggested for a quick meal so we could get on the road). I guess we've had enough Chinese as Sonia happily ate a whole hamburger and most of both our fries! I cringed...but it did taste good right then!
Then a 3 hour drive to Yangjiang. It made me think of that very long morning drive Sonia had before meeting me in GZ on August 9, 2011. The drive is really pretty... a good 4 lane highway, with beautiful green mountains, rice paddies, fruit (our guide said they grow little mandarin oranges in the area), and flowering trees.
Her city is famous for knives of high quality and very low cost. I wanted some but was told I'm not able to take on the train to HongKong. I guess they had an incident a couple years back in a train in Hunan with knives from YJ city so now are very strict. The hotel said that FedEx could send to me, so we bought some only to find out they actually can't get through customs either. So, our guide managed to return them and get my money back. I'll have to keep that in mind when we next visit... if we were flying from China instead of train to HongKong, it would have been no issue.
Once that whole knife deal was done, Sonia and I had a quick dinner in the hotel and went to bed early.
Pictures...
Such an incredible trip! It seems to be going so quickly and Sonia seems to be an awesome traveler.
ReplyDeleteI guess we will have to watch out for that sneaky photographer in the future. Transporting knives sounds a bit risky and has the potential to delay re-entry..., but would have been a cool souvenir.
ReplyDelete